Litchi Mission Rotator Instructions ALPHA!!! Litchi Mission Utilities Logo

Instructions

This web application fulfills one step in the light painting process.

  1. In page one of Litchi Mission Rotator:
    1. Select the desired height above take-off of what will be the lowest waypoint after the mission is rotated.
    2. Drones with on-board waypoints such as a Mavic 2 Pro load long missions 99 waypoints at a time. As each batch of 99 waypoints is loaded, the drone pauses for a few seconds. Those pauses can result in a bright spot in the light painting. One can choose to reverse the heading at the 99th waypoint so that the drone's light is rotated away during those pauses. This should prevent any bright spots in the light painting produced by such a pause.
    3. Optionally, list any waypoints where it is desired for the drone to turn around and travel to another part of the painting mission unseen.
      • When this field is left blank, the application will label any waypoints that are followed by a gap of more than five times the current average distance between waypoints. This may help to identify what values should be placed in this field.
    4. Use the file chooser to upload your CSV file.
    5. Generate the mission and review the resulting parameters.
  2. In page two of Litchi Mission Rotator:
    1. Review the parameters and calculations.
    2. Download the csv file.
  3. In the Litchi Mission Hub:
    1. Use the Missions menu to import the csv file created by Litchi Mission Rotator.
    2. Adjust the Litchi mission parameters (such as speed) as desired
    3. Go fly!
A rotated mission drawn from an image

This web application can be used to perform one step in the drone light painting process. The complete process for light painting is documented here. Briefly, the light painting process includes the following steps:

  • Acquire an image defining the shape to be painted
    • If the image is an SVG file
    • Otherwise
      • Overlay that image in Google Earth Pro
      • Manually draw a path along the outline of that shape
      • Export that path from Google Earth Pro as a KMZ file
  • Remove waypoints that are too close together
  • Rotate that path along the X-axis (Longitude-axis) using this web application
  • Import that rotated mission into Litchi
  • Test that mission using Virtual Litchi Mission
  • Fly the mission while recording a video of the flight with a tripod-mounted camera
Minimum Height:
ft/m
Reverse heading at WP99:
Optional Waypoint Turns:
Litchi CSV File Upload:

Recent Enhancements

  • 2024-09-06: Added waypoint marking when the distance between waypoints is more than five times the current average distance between waypoints. This may help to determine where to add optional waypoint turns.
  • 2024-07-13: Added the ability to reverse the drone's heading at WP99, WP198, etc. for those drones that need to load missions 99 waypoints at a time.
  • 2024-06-01: Moved the "remove close waypoints" function to a separate utility.
  • 2024-05-11: Added the ability to select the minimum distance between waypoints.
  • 2023-10-06: In addition to rotating a Litchi mission, one can now upload and rotate KML and KMZ files while creating Litchi CSV output.
  • 2023-10-06: Added the ability to skip waypoints that are too close which would otherwise prevent the mission from being flown.
Litchi Utilities dot Com
by Wes Barris